RAC complaint - serious car damage

Tanjawi

I'd like opinions please. In December 2020 I called RAC Breakdown from home because my car was idling rough, juddering, and making a knocking noise. The patrolman arrived and indicated it could be a faulty injector. He advised me it was OK to drive it to the mechanic and he'd follow in case something happened. I drove the car for approximately 1.5 miles (it drove rough and not much power) and then the engined stalled. The car was then towed to a garage who indicated the engine had seized and there was severe damage to the engine which now needed to be replaced. The mechanic said he cannot tell why it seized but he found a damaged piston and fragments of metal. My argument is that the car should not have been driven in the first place. If the car was shaking and juddering, it was a sign something was wrong. Why did the RAC patrol not tow it and instead confidently advised me to drive it? I believe further damage occurred by driving the car in that state. RAC say something was already wrong with the car. When does anyone call RAC if something's not wrong with their car?! Yes my car was not normal when I called them but their advice to drive it caused further damage. I presented them with the full service history of the car and a recent service. The car was very well looked after and not abused. We have now been without the use of this car since December 2020 and it's been a massive hassle. Is RAC liable for the damages in your opinion?  Also, when the car stalled, we were on a busy road. The patrolman opened my car's door and a car that was driving past hit the door and caused a dent resulting in further damage to the car's body. It's been an absolute nightmare. The car's been moved using recovery on 3 occasions now for report/inspection purposes and on 2 occasions the RAC patrol noted the wrong mileage on the odometer. RAC complaints dept tried to use that against me by stating that the car has been driven approximately 160 miles when I was arguing that the car was undriveable. It was quite an anxious moment for me until I noticed the discrepancy was from their end which in my opinion completely puts their initial patrolman's credibility in question. He gave me the wrong advice to drive the car, opened the door of the car on a busy road resulting in an accident, and noted the wrong mileage on the odometer.
RAC are taking ages to resolve this. What are my rights? 

williamgriffin

Can't you use paragraphs?

angrycrow

There are two separate issues here so lets split them out and deal with the easier one first. 

Did the patrol man open the door into a passing car in which case he is at fault or did he have the door open for a while and a passing car struck the already open door. If the later the fault rests with the passing car and not the patrol man.

The symptoms you describe of the engine that caused you to call the RAC do sound serious and it is quite likely the damage was already done by the point the RAC arrived. That said it does appear to have been poor advice to tell you to drive the car. Ultimately you will need a report to confirm the route cause of the failure, the broken piston is likely to be a secondary symptom of an underlying fault such as lack of oil, oil pump failure or a dropped valve. Did you have any warning lights pre failure like the oil pressure light. 

What is the make model and age of car as some engines like early Renault 1.5 dci engines have common failures. 

fred246

You won't get much sympathy on this forum I am afraid. Everything will be your fault. It's a bit like going to a garage. The customer is always wrong.

AdrianC

Tanjawi said:

I'd like opinions please.

In December 2020 I called RAC Breakdown from home because my car was idling rough, juddering, and making a knocking noise. The patrolman arrived and indicated it could be a faulty injector. He advised me it was OK to drive it to the mechanic and he'd follow in case something happened.

I drove the car for approximately 1.5 miles (it drove rough and not much power) and then the engined stalled. The car was then towed to a garage who indicated the engine had seized and there was severe damage to the engine which now needed to be replaced. The mechanic said he cannot tell why it seized but he found a damaged piston and fragments of metal.

My argument is that the car should not have been driven in the first place. If the car was shaking and juddering, it was a sign something was wrong. Why did the RAC patrol not tow it and instead confidently advised me to drive it? I believe further damage occurred by driving the car in that state. RAC say something was already wrong with the car. When does anyone call RAC if something's not wrong with their car?! Yes my car was not normal when I called them but their advice to drive it caused further damage.

I presented them with the full service history of the car and a recent service. The car was very well looked after and not abused. We have now been without the use of this car since December 2020 and it's been a massive hassle. Is RAC liable for the damages in your opinion? 

Also, when the car stalled, we were on a busy road. The patrolman opened my car's door and a car that was driving past hit the door and caused a dent resulting in further damage to the car's body. It's been an absolute nightmare.

The car's been moved using recovery on 3 occasions now for report/inspection purposes and on 2 occasions the RAC patrol noted the wrong mileage on the odometer. RAC complaints dept tried to use that against me by stating that the car has been driven approximately 160 miles when I was arguing that the car was undriveable. It was quite an anxious moment for me until I noticed the discrepancy was from their end which in my opinion completely puts their initial patrolman's credibility in question. He gave me the wrong advice to drive the car, opened the door of the car on a busy road resulting in an accident, and noted the wrong mileage on the odometer.

RAC are taking ages to resolve this. What are my rights? 

I think you're going to have to prove that 1.5 mile journey was the difference between a saveable engine and a terminal failure. And I doubt you can - your mechanic says he can't tell the cause, and the car has been moved to several other places for diagnostics.

It's entirely possible that the injector diagnosis was wrong, and the piston was already breaking up. The service history is irrelevant.

If the patrol caused the door damage, the RAC will be liable. If the other driver hit an open door because they weren't looking, their insurance is liable. If the car is economically unviable because of the engine damage, does it matter?

pramsay13

I think you would be better getting your car fixed and then pursuing RAC for costs if you can prove that the extra driving after the call out resulted in the damage. If someone else has damaged your car door you will need to take it up with them / their insurance.
Do you have any legal cover with your car insurance? It might be worth speaking to them about the incident.

Sandtree

The damage to the door will depend if the patrolman opened it into the path of a correctly proceeding vehicle or if a vehicle hit an open door. These sorts of claims are often a bit of a pain to deal with and where the area of damage is on both the door and the third party vehicle are normally key points of the argument.

Tanjawi said:
The mechanic said he cannot tell why it seized but he found a damaged piston and fragments of metal. 

This is going to be a major issue for you... you need an engineers report which not only states what the cause is but opines on if the 1.5 miles driven changed it from a minor problem to a complete failure, ideally it would also say the repair costs prior to the drive as that would remain your liability.

George_Michael

fred246 said:

You won't get much sympathy on this forum I am afraid. Everything will be your fault. It's a bit like going to a garage. The customer is always wrong.

Give it a rest fred. You have gone from being repetitive to boring and annoying and you never post anything new, simply rehashing the same old hatred of all garages and mechanics.

As with everything in life, there will be good and bad mechanics and trustworthy and untrustworthy garages and if you have only ever dealt with dodgy ones, I'm afraid that says more about you and how you pick who to deal with than anything else.
Like many people, I've had work carried out on my car by many different people and in 40+ years of driving, I've only ever had problems a couple of times.
Maybe I'm simply more discerning than you and do a bit of due diligence before trusting my cars to someone. 

Here's my most recent experience with a garage.
A couple of months ago, I was driving a Volvo diesel and the engine service light came on. This is the red, "fix immediately" light.
I took the car into a independent Volvo garage and they hooked it up to the computer to see what the problem was and the code indicated that it was the Eloys additive tank was empty. The mechanic checked this and there was plenty of fluid in the tank.
They said that it may well have been a simple software glitch and cleared the code and advised me to keep an eye on it to see it it came back on and if it did, the car would need to be booked in for investigation. (just over 2 months later and it's still fine).
The total cost for this was £75 which isn't bad at all considering that to get to the additive tank the rear seat needs to be removed, something that takes a bit of time to do.
They could easily have told me that the tank was empty and charged me for refilling it or even stated that the tank sensor itself was knackered and needed replacing but no, they were honest and upfront about what the problem was.
Why don't you ever seem to find mechanics like this I wonder?

Herzlos

fred246 said:

You won't get much sympathy on this forum I am afraid. Everything will be your fault. It's a bit like going to a garage. The customer is always wrong.

You can safely ignore Fred. He barges into most threads involving garages to complain but rarely has any constructive advice.
Why he does it is anyones guess, but I doubt he'll stop any time soon.

fred246

There really are only garages I can think of where it is recommended that you take someone knowledgeable with you for your protection.

George_Michael

fred246 said:

There really are only garages I can think of where it is recommended that you take someone knowledgeable with you for your protection.

Agreed, but that's an awful lot different to saying that all garages and mechanics are untrustworthy and will rip off customers or damage their vehicles.